Hankyu Department Stores Inc. said Wednesday its consolidated net profit in the first half to Sept. 30 rose 1,042.2 percent to 1.59 billion yen due to large-scale cost cutting.
The Osaka-based department store chain operator said large-scale cost cutting in various fields other than labor costs helped the surge in group operating profit.
It also cited the previous year's one-off loss of 18.22 billion yen to make up for a shortfall of reserves for retirement allowances and pension plans as another factor behind the sharp gain in net profit.
Although its group sales in the first half dipped 1.5 percent from a year earlier to 187.67 billion yen, its group operating profit jumped 118.6 percent to 3 billion yen and its group pretax profit surged 92.7 percent to 3.49 billion yen.
It plans to maintain an interim dividend payment of 6.25 yen per share.
For the full year to March, the company expects group sales to rise 0.8 percent to 398 billion yen and group pretax profit to surge 60.9 percent to 10 billion yen.
But it projects a group net loss of 8.5 billion yen because of restructuring costs. The company posted a group net profit of 2.16 billion yen in the previous business year.